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Ugly stain on Canada’s aboriginal record: Goar

The week before Christmas every newly elected MP received an unsettling letter. It wasn’t a threat or a warning. It was a polite reminder that they had inherited a festering injustice.

A poster was attached to the note, emblazoned with the words “Cultural Genocide.” It referred to the “Sixties Scoop,” a modern-day echo of the residential schools nightmare. Between 1961 and 1985 child welfare authorities removed thousands of First Nations children from their homes, their families, their communities. They transplanted them in non-aboriginal families, guided by the belief they would be better off growing up “white.” A generation of indigenous Canadians, now in its 40s and 50s, was stripped of its culture, language, identity and traditions.

A woman is comforted at a gathering of 'Sixties Scoop' survivors before an apology from Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger in Winnipeg, June 18, 2015. (JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The adoptees, unlike the survivors of Canada’s notorious residential schools, never received any acknowledgement of their loss. No government took responsibility for uprooting them, apologized or tried to rectify the damage.

After years of inaction, they launched a class action lawsuit in 2009. They identified a lead plaintiff, compiled evidence, retained a lawyer and cleared all the procedural hurdles to get the case to trial. Throughout the process federal officials used every legal tactic at their disposal to block the case and silence the claimants.

“They had 12 lawyers. They refused to sit down with us. Through five years of litigation, they kept appealing every ruling,” said Jeffrey Wilson, legal counsel for class action. “So we’re pushing ahead.”

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That was the situation on October 19, 2015 when Justin Trudeau was elected Canada’s 23rd prime minister. Although he promised “a renewed relationship between the federal government and indigenous peoples built on trust, recognition and respect for rights,” the Liberal leader said nothing — and his agenda contained nothing — about the Sixties Scoop or its painful legacy.

Fearing they would have to start afresh, a group of survivors from Ontario sent parliamentarians a double-edged holiday greeting: “We wish you the best of festivals and religious celebrations. Our case — Brown v Canada — now proceeding to trial, is about our children, our culture, our festivals, our celebrations and what it means to lose them. We are First Nations’ people. We believe the case may be a lesson for all peoples and their children.”

The Sixties Scoop is not century-old history. It happened within the lifetime of most Canadians. Yet most citizens know little about it. They were never told that public officials, acting in their name, continued to “reprogram” aboriginal children even as Canada’s disgraced residential schools closed.

Marcia Brown Martel, 52, who initiated the lawsuit, was taken from her home at the age of four. Her original name was Sally Susan Mathias. Her family belonged to the Temagami First Nation. Her home was in the Beaverhouse Community near Kirkland Lake.

She and her six-year-old sister Doris Lynn were scooped in 1967. Child welfare authorities told their bereft mother they were mentally handicapped. The girls made a vow never to forget they were members of the Beaverhouse community.

They spent five years in foster care. Then Sally was adopted by a non-aboriginal family in Trent River, 50 km east of Peterborough. Her new parents renamed her Marcia. At first they treated her relatively well but the relationship deteriorated when her adoptive mother moved to Texas. By the time the teenager reached the age of majority, it had broken down completely. Her estranged mother shipped her back to North Bay. The 17-year-old arrived with no proof of her identity, no legal papers, no memory of the Ojibway language and no link to her biological family.

She applied for her birth record from the Registrar General of Canada, seeking to affirm her Indian status, only to be told Sally Susan Mathias was dead. This meant she could not claim benefits such as housing and post-secondary education to which she would have been entitled under the Indian Act. For five years she struggled, lost and lonely. But she never gave up.

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Today Brown Martel is chief of the Beaverhouse First Nation. Her mission is to ensure that no aboriginal child has to go through what she endured. The court case is scheduled for June 2016.

There is still time for the Liberal government to avoid a costly, rancorous legal showdown. Although the members of the class action are seeking damages of $85,000 apiece, most are willing to accept a negotiated settlement much lower than that. Their primary motivation is to establish, once and for all, that the government of Canada breached its constitutional duty to protect aboriginal children, allowed provincial child welfare officials to extinguish their rights under the Indian Act, failed to provide services to which they were entitled and encouraged a policy of cultural assimilation. They want an ironclad assurance it will never happen again. “It’s not about money; it’s about systemic change,” says Wilson.

For Trudeau it is about reconciliation, fairness and respect. It is his first chance to right a wrong that has festered for too long.

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